links for 2006-04-29
-
The last great track and field athlete. Seriously, who’s left?
April 28th, 2006
Archive for April, 2006
links for 2006-04-23
-
A self-proclaimed dork in our economics study group referred me to this site. It explains inflation in simple terms, the causes of inflation, and presents an accurate measurement of inflation. (Don’t everyone click on this site at once.)
April 22nd, 2006
Welcome! (doyouhavethemoney)
Being a newfound entrepreneur, I’ve started down the road of buying my own health insurance. That’s an interesting enough experience, especially being in Texas, where apparently they go out of their way to discourage people from buying their own. One example: in Texas, you can’t get individual health insurance that covers maternity. In 49 other states, yes you can! Figure that one out.
Anyway, back to the solo insurance. I got a notice from my new insurance provider yesterday. It was short and sweet: they initiated my initial bank draft to cover the first month’s insurance. This letter, coincidentally, also happened to be the first piece of correspondence I’ve received from them. That was equally interesting, because it basically served as my confirmation that we were approved.
Personally, I think a welcome pack of goodies, like insurance cards and policy packets, would have been a nicer introduction. Introducing yourself with an invoice isn’t exactly the best way to win the hearts and minds of customers. Then again, it’s not not like they have to worry about customers defecting to competitors in the same market. What competitors? Everyone else is having their choices handed to them by their employers.
April 19th, 2006
links for 2006-04-09
-
How many thousands of dollars did these notes cost? Great stuff.
April 8th, 2006
Changes
I quit my job last week. It was a long time coming; the work I had been doing was starting to wear me down.
At school, I’ve been exposed to presentations on entrepreneurship as well as the marketing angle on the technology life cycle. Very fascinating stuff. You can practically draw a solid line between the innovators and the entrepreneurs, two groups of people that try to gain an advantage in the market with different approaches than what already exist. They are the risk-takers.
Contrast that with my old company, where our target market were customers that refused to take risks with technology. Instead of trying to innovate, these customers were pragmatic or conservative with their choice of backoffice systems. They required lots of research and needed the backing of the industry in order to make a decision. Nothing wrong with that, since that’s the vast majority of the marketplace. But that was where my beliefs and my former company did not mesh.
The good news was that I had a job lined up to do exactly what I wanted to be doing — working with innovators and startup folks. It’s been a little busy making the change. Cash flow, health insurance, taxes, all that stuff. Ironically, the worst part about the job change was leaving my old boss with one day’s notice. The last time I left a job with less than 2 weeks notice was when I was 16. So I thought he deserved better than that. At the same time, I’ve been taught some hard lessons about job changes, and so when it came to a chance to jump at an opportunity to (a) do what I’ve been wanted to do, and (b) help the family’s bottom line, the decision was no contest.
That was last Friday, and it’s been busy at hell ever since. Which to me is a good thing. If you’re not scrapping, you’re too comfortable. It’s also part of what makes risk-takers so fun to work with If you want something, you have to go get it. Be the first in line. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Take a chance, dammit!
April 6th, 2006
